Yikes.

A relative sent over a couple of tapes to help swing us over to the anti-evolution dark side. So I dug out a notebook & pen & rusty BSc. Zoology degree in prep for some serious notetaking as I was going to make the effort to refute every single nonsensical point being made.

First impressions: This guy (if I have his name correct) is really likeable. This guy is a master speaker. This guy has really put something together here. This guy is beyond "out to lunch". This guy is quite infuriating. This guy has created some exquisite propaganda here.

About two hours in, I just became overwhelmed with the sheer volume of it all. So now this is going to be a much bigger project for me than I ever expected.

I made careful notes, especially the "astronomical" claims, with the idea that I would present them here for the group. But then I realized that this dude's nonsense was of such quality that the group was probably already very well aquainted with him. So now I would appreciate it if someone could direct me to one of the better anti-Hovind sites of which there must be more than a few out there (and save me from note-taking heck).

Hovind's web site is www.drdino.com

Essentially, Hovind believes the universe was created about 6,000 years ago. And one thing for sure, he "prays" on the ignorant.

Here are a few goodies:

If the Big Bang came from a spinning nothing, the "conservation of angular momentum" has it that all the things that fly out of it should have continued to spin in the same direction. So why do we have planets & moons with an opposite spin?

If the Big Bang were true, all energy out of it would be evenly distributed instead of "lumpy". He says this fact had astronomer Fred Hoyle stating that "a sickly pall now hangs over the Big Bang theory."

Galaxies billions of years old should have lost their spiral shape.

If stars die every 30 years or so, how come we don't see billions of super novas instead of 300 or so.

Numerous ancient astronomers wrote that Sirus was red in colour. The fact that this binary star is now white shows this process occurs over thousands of years not billions.

Jupiter is cooling off. How can it still be cooling off after billions of years?

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is losing heat yet it has a very strong magnetic field indicating a molten core. After billions of years, it should have cooled solid.

Saturn has rings that are moving away from the planet & unstable, how can they be billions of years old?

The earth's moon continues to move away from the planet. Then billions of years ago it must have been close enough to raise havoc. The reverse calculation would have it touching the earth.

Comets lose material & last about 10,000 years. So the universe can't be billions of years old. No evidence for a far away comet belt.

The earth's magnetic field has declined by 6% over the last 150 years. So earlier it must have been too strong for life to exist.

And carbon dating can't actually work because the changing magnetic field would effect the in-coming radiation affecting C14 in the atmosphere.

Magnetic reversals never happened. The mid-atlantic ocean magnetic record shows only stronger-weaker areas, not reversals.

Pangea fits together only if Africa is shrunk by 40% and many other countries eliminated.

The earth's rotation is slowing down at a rate that, billions & millions of years ago, it must have been spinning fast enough to ensure nothing could live on earth.

Why are there no deserts older than 4,000 years (Sahara)?

Annual rings from Arctic ice core samples show only warmer & colder periods, not annual activity. The "Lost Squadron" aircraft were found 263 ft down in 48 years & the ice exhibited hundreds of layers.


Now, interesting note: This fellow states he will debate anyone, anywhere...

RBG

I'm not going to debunk this lot (I'll leave it to the more experienced people in here) but to me it seems on the whole he's greatly underestimating both space and time scales cosmic phenomena occur in.

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

i cant really comment on the astronomical ones, but geological ones i can


Ok, pole reversals are in fact reversals, not weakening, its hard to mistake the orientaion of paleomagnetism with strength


Africa does fit, although i suspect that he expects all the countries to fit EXACTLY together as they appear to be today, and if you look at the geology of the continents, there has been significant change in their shape, india for axample has about 20% or more of its area underneath asia, go back a few million years and it looks much different.


And im not very clued up on carbon dating, but my understanding is that it doesnt matter how much C14 there is in the atmosphere (and therefore the creature) because it the ratio between what C14 is there and what it decays into, ie a large amount will show the same ratio as a small amount


and as a side note, go to his site and read the fag section, he shows a poor understanding of science but worse still, many of his explanations are from the bible, hes just another creation nonscience guy

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Why do they call it 'common sense' when it isn't all that common?

For the planets and moons spinning in opposite directions, I dont see how this relates to conservation of angular momentum, because planets and moons form from debris surrounding a star, so the way they spin is random, or am i totally off here? Also, cant the direction of spin of moons and planets be altered by celestial catastrophic events?

Regarding the Sirius thing, the guy misinterprets this. This relates to the Dogon mystery and how they found out about Sirius B. Myth had it that they said Sirius was red, which is not possible, but Sirius B was a red giant before it became a white dwarf. European astronomers knew that, and perhaps a missionary passed the info to the Dogons, who incorporated it into their mythology and astronomical traditions, and this is where the idea of a red Sirius came into existence. Since this is false, because it was Sirius B that was once a red giant but definitely not in historical times, he is wrong in this.
Or did i once again make a mess out of things?

I imagine a lot of this has been dealt with in the talk.origins.faq (not sure of the exact URL) as I don't see anything I haven't heard before.

The ability of YEC to pick holes in Evolution, be it biological, planetary, or astronomical, is only equaled by their inabiltiy to form a scientific basis for their YEC beliefs. I am constantly reminded of an old cartoon of a professor with calculations and right in the middle is a big "And then a miracle happened".

Pretty well sums up the YEC, IMHO

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JayUtah wrote:
The marketplace of ideas ensures that each item is put on display, but does not compel its purchase.

Have you looked at the Talk Origins Archive? [Oops! Already mentioned. But I'll keep it here, for the link.]

Being a layman in a group of laymen, I would suggest replying:

"Good questions. What do astronomers have to say about them?"

"Good questions. What do geologists have to say about them?"

It's easy for one side to make a convincing argument about almost anything, when the other side is nowhere to be seen.

A good bit of information is actually stored at TalkOrigins on this supposed 'Doctor'. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/

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Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Asimov's addition - "Or ignorance."

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

"If stars die every 30 years or so, how come we don't see billions of super novas instead of 300 or so. "

Umm, Stars die every 30 years or so? Eeek, we're all going to die! I've been alive for 29 years, so the Sun must be going any time now.

An awful lot of the other ones are of the order 'something is going in this direction right now. We shall assume that it has always been doing this. Et voila! Millions of years ago, it was all the way over there!'

And the tide was going out this morning, too. Extrapolating back, its a good job Jesus could walk on water, as he wouldn't have any land to stand on!

Wow, even I can tackle some of these…

Because very few of them are massive enough to go supernova?

And, according to current theories, that’s exactly right!

First of all, Africa is not a country. Secondly, I don’t know if the 40% figure is accurate, but the crust is malleable: it can change shape and size in long periods of time.

Hasn’t Antarctica been frozen for longer than that? It’s a desert too.

Actually, in my previous silly example, forget about Jesus. Lets use numbers for this rather silly answer. In Brighton, the tide fell from about 5.3m to a touch under 2m between 3am and 6am this morning, according to the UK Hydrographic Office. Being a bit cautious, we'll call it a metre an hour. Everest is 8846 metres above sea level. So the earliest anyone could have stood on dry land is about 8840 hours before 3am this morning.

So anyone claiming to have stood on dry land before 7pm GMT on the 22nd of March 2003 is as much a liar as those "scientists" who insist the universe is billions of years old!

Collisions and gravitation can affect spin.

We're working on that. Yes, it is a weakness with the model, but we're starting to refine the model in ways that explain this.

Not if the shockwave that causes the spiral arms is still propagating.

They live far longer than that. At very least, we have historical records of the Sun dating back thousands of years.

What are his sources? Which astronomers is he talking about? And he has the process backwards - as far as I know, stars can't heat up like that.

Because it hasn't lost all of its internal heat - in fact it's actually producing heat.

Interactions with Jupiter's gravity and magnetic field would do it.

Again, he has this backwards. The rings are *inside* the Roche limit and being pulled in. I'm not sure how old the rings are believed to be, but we know they're younger than the planet itself.

Sounds like the current theory to me.

Nobody claims that comets are as old as the universe.

We've imaged Kuiper Belt Objects and Sedna *might* be an Oort Cloud object.

Not going to touch this one. Too far beyond my expertise. I'll defer to Invader Spleen.

You don't need incoming radiation to produce C14. It's produced naturally by living creatures.

The rocks have the Earth's magnetic polarity imprinted in their own magnetic fields, proving that hte poles have reversed.

Erosion. Plates being distorted by collisions and/or volcanism.

The Sahara is far older than that.

Not going to touch this one either. Don't know enough about ice cores nor the Lost Squardon.

Talkorigins has an awesome resource for just your situation: an encyclopedic guide to creationist claims and their rebuttals.

Example: WWII plane buried under layers of ice

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

How does that work then?

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

The man appears to pick and choose and "rewrite" his assumptions so that they fit what he's going to say in his debunking. That's not science. Hell it's not even good debate practice.

I'd give this jerk a <plonk>...

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Starry, starry night...

My site TheSpacewriter.com
and my blog: TheSpaceWriter's Ramblings

I've seen this claim before, I'll have to look it up. I believe the claim is the Egyptians stated that Sirus was red. If I recall correctly there were two explanations for this, One- it was a mistranslation, or Two- Sirius past through a dust cloud making it red.

I'll have to dig out some books. I've never heard the claim that "numerous" ancient astronomers said that, only the Egyptians. We don't have all that many records that go back "thousands" of years...

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"Ignorance has caused more calamity than malignity" H.G. Wells

"Getting lost is part of exploring." Uniqua in "Backyardigans-Heart of the Jungle"

I was afraid I would hear that name agian. Here's a link to some info on Mr. Hovind and some quotes from the same man.

"Therefore, there may not be any other stars in the solar system that have planets around them."

"If you are traveling down the highway at sixty miles an hour, and turn your headlights on, how fast is the light going from your headlights? Compared to you, it is going at the speed of light. Compared to someone on the sidewalk it is going at the speed of light plus sixty miles an hour." (isn't this impossible)

"If [black holes] exist, of course, you can not say that the speed of light ... is always constant, because it can be attracted by gravity. It can be slowed down, obviously, you can stop it, assuming its attracted by gravity and assuming there are black holes."

"Light is slowing down." (ummm...ok)

I know he's also refused several debates on creation/evolution. More on that can be found at the above link.

I could keep going on and on, but I'll spare you, and just finish of with my signature...

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"On this ship you will refer to me as idiot not "you captian".....I mean....you know what I mean."

On carbon dating.

On the Sahara's age.

On Sirius.

Oh, heck, just point those people to Talk Origins...

Yep. Our pal obviously rejects most modern physics including special relativity. One of the principals of SR is that the speed of light is the same for all observers regardless of the motion of the source.

One thing to realize is that this is true for all waves, not just light. The speed of a wave is a property of the medium through which it travels and has nothing to do with the motion of the source (light, of course, requires no medium, but its speed is determined by the properties of empty space). If that car honks its horn while moving at 60 mph the sound moves away from it at 740 mph (the speed of sound at sea level) in all directions; not at 800 mph in front of it and 680 behind it.

Just to